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Q6600 vs i5 2500k - for gaming

ashatron

ashatron

ashatron

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Joined
15 Sep 2009
Posts
659
Location
Sheffield
Hi all!

I'm wondering weather to save my money and go for a cheap q6600 set up or pay a fair bit more and go for an i5 2500k set up. The 2500k set up is about £240ish more.

Now I know the i5 2500k will perform a lot better in all respects Including gaming, but will gaming on it be that much better? How much do you think? 5fps, 10fps more? (bare in mind the q6600 will be at 3.2ghz)

Gonna be using a gtx 460, playing cod black ops, crysis (on low), need for speed, mafia 2 etc just general gaming.

Hope you can help :)
 
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I moved from a q6600 at 3.2 to a 2500k at stock, and the difference is pretty phenomenal I think, most noticable in crysis and gta4. in crysis I now get 50 fps average on high with a 5850.
the difference is most noticeable in terms of minimum framerate as opposed to average, no games now really get below 30 ever, so you won't notice unless you're monitoring framerates.

HOWEVER you need to read a bit into the recent developments on sandy bridge here
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18236550
as there is a problem with the chipset for all p67 and h67 motherboards, but if you only need 2 SATA devices (or four if you go for any mid range mothrboard) then you will have no problems so long a you only connect devices to the sata 6gbps ports not the 3gbps ones. replacement motherboards will be coming to fix the issue but not till around april.
If you need more sata devices (hard drives and dvd/blu-ray drives), and can wait till april, do! by then the fixed sandy bridge MBs will be arriving and AMDs bulldozer platform will be weeks away, which may blow sandy out of the water.
 
martynpd said:
i upgraded from a q6600 2 years ago and the difference was night and day
Click to expand...

I managed to find some info the subject (anandtech), it appears like you say the q6600 is MILES behind the i5, like 20fps. Looks like more money spending!!

Cheers dude :)
 
i5 2500k at 3.3ghz (stock speed) outperforms an overclocked q6600 at 3.3ghz by about 15 - 30% on average on the game i tested.

The i5 2500k consumes less power, produces less heat and can be clocked far higher for ever higher performance, 4.4ghz easily. Worthwhile in my opinion.

Also worth mentioning that the q6600 combo would be fine for the games you play however.
 
ashatron said:
I managed to find some info the subject (anandtech), it appears like you say the q6600 is MILES behind the i5, like 20fps. Looks like more money spending!!

Cheers dude :)
Click to expand...

I honestly think my brothers overclocked i3 terminates it too. I upgraded to an i7 the i7 is a waste for gaming i5 gives the same performance.

My reason for
Upgrading from the q6600 was I wanted to overclock it. But I had a evga 680i mobo and everyone knows these boards don't overclock. So instead I sold the components and got an i7 setup.
should have got the i5 but you live and learn being an early adoptor

Basically what I'm trying to say is don't be affaid to cut corners games are just not using the CPUs properly at the moment. I3 i5 easy to overclockore than enough. Sandy if you can Afford abit more
 
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TrojanWhore said:
I moved from a q6600 at 3.2 to a 2500k at stock, and the difference is pretty phenomenal I think, most noticable in crysis and gta4. in crysis I now get 50 fps average on high with a 5850.
the difference is most noticeable in terms of minimum framerate as opposed to average, no games now really get below 30 ever, so you won't notice unless you're monitoring framerates.
Click to expand...

Really? I get around 40/45 FPS Average with an E6300 Dual Core and a 4870. 1280X1024 Resolution, no AA (All High). Yours seems a little low?

I'm also moving upto a Q6600 as soon as I recieve my 4890. I imagine the i5 is much faster however, due to new technology and SB.
BUT, Is it really that noticeable? How much better will it be for Rendering, main reason for me getting a Q6600 is it's rendering power on 3DS MAX.
 
C64 said:
i'd like to see a dual core i3 beating a quad in games like bad company 2 ?
any proof of that ?
Click to expand...

dude have you ever looked at anandtech.com?
q6600 is old as anything and its been confirmed and confirmed again on these very forums that the i3 beats it even on games like bc2, crysis etc.
 
Emphacy said:
BUT, Is it really that noticeable? How much better will it be for Rendering, main reason for me getting a Q6600 is it's rendering power on 3DS MAX.
Click to expand...

hehe, me too. Need a new 3D (c4d) and video editing rig and the q6600 seems like a good compromise of price and performance.

But I'm aware how much better the i5's are for 3D and video, I just wasn't sure about the game :)
 
iamtheoneneo said:
dude have you ever looked at anandtech.com?
q6600 is old as anything and its been confirmed and confirmed again on these very forums that the i3 beats it even on games like bc2, crysis etc.
Click to expand...

It's comparing stock clocks 2.4ghz vs 2.93 any results for bad company 2 at same clocks ? and what about smoothness ? at same clocks my core 2 duo = sluggish choppy bad company 2 even though it could report the same framerate.
 
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your probably right the overclocked i3 would waste the q6600 most q6600s go to 3.4 most i3s go to 4.2 clocked at the same speed the q6600 should win, more cache more cores

just so happens the q6600s a lot of the time you had to fight to get it there
 
C64 said:
It's comparing stock clocks 2.4ghz vs 2.93 any results for bad company 2 at same clocks ? and what about smoothness ? at same clocks my core 2 duo = sluggish choppy bad company 2 even though it could report the same framerate.
Click to expand...

i dont get the problem? you stated that a q6600 was better than an i3. so that is pretty good representation of the retail product...if you going to twist the results by leaving one chip at stock and the other not then its not exactly fair....besides even both overclocked id imagine the i3 can push more ghz and always be ahead of even the best q6600.iv seen results somewhere but im at work and cant go looking round the net for them.

theres a big diff between 775 archi and 1566 after all.
 
I don't care about stock results (this is an overclocking site) and I also cannot find bad company 2 on that site for comparison.
And most q6600's go to 3.5-3.6 just because yours doesn't means nothing as the vast majority will hit 3.5-3.6.

Wouldn't swap my Q6600 @ 3.5-3.6 for a dual core i3 any day of the week.

martynpd said:
your probably right the overclocked i3 would waste the q6600
Click to expand...
Quite the opposite I'd imagine in games which take advantage of 4 cores.
Raw numbers mean nothing really you can be stood still in a game and see more frames but the quads come in to their own when it's busy and I can tell you now there's a vast difference in bc2 between 2 cores and 4 in terms of smoothness hyper threading just doesn't cut it vs a true quad core cpu.
 
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can only speak from personal experience, the Q6600 is hardly past it. no problems running well, anything here, to be honest BC2 runs a lot smoother on my system than it does on my mates i3 (though its stock clocked, because hes afraid of overclocking, don't ask!) the biggest limiting factor i have noticed in recent times is far far from the CPU in games, for me its always been the GPU mroe than anything. though CPU intensive games like supreme commander always like the extra horsepower, its all personal preference to be honest. is the CPU really slowing things down? do you really need to change it? etc. plan on changing my system for AMD system when Bulldozer, etc. arrives, my Q6600 just gets very very hot..! ;)
 
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